While we mods are all sand-filter users and Waterbear and Chem_Geek (I believe) are cart users, and many others are DE users, ALL will give extremely good performance if sized and maintained correctly.

Carts are like eating steamed Blue Crabs in Maryland. If you figure out the "trick" to using carts, as 'Bear and 'Geek have done, they are very easy and even preferable. If you don't, they are painful and messy and you'll curse the day you got one.

Just like "picking" crabs. Once someone showed us the CORRECT way to eat Blue Crabs, it's easy and delicious. Until then, it's slow, messy, painful, and takes a long time to get enough crab to fill you up.

What's great about sand filters is that if sized correctly they have the easiest learning curve. There's no "trick" and they aren't complicated. Dump a little DE in the skimmer, and add a skimmer sock (both low-cost items), and you'll be hard-pressed to find a difference between sand and DE or sand and a cart.

But a properly sized and operated DE filter is still the Gold Standard for how filters should perform. People who have them and know them, love them and wouldn't have anything else. My dad had a DE for 20+ years.

But back to my original point: All three will perform admirably if sized correctly and maintained properly.

Carl